English regiments[1] bore their share in this work and suffered heavily in the course of it, until on the
Aug. 23./Sept. 3. 3rd of September the citadel capitulated.
Before the close of the siege Marlborough and Eugene, leaving a sufficient force before Tournay, had moved back with the main army before the lines at Douay. They had long decided that the lines were far too formidable to be forced, but they saw no reason for communicating this opinion to Villars.
Aug. 20/31. On the 31st of August Lord Orkney, with twenty squadrons and the whole of the grenadiers of the army, marched away silently and swiftly eastward towards
Aug. 23./Sept. 3. St. Ghislain on the Haine. Three days later, immediately after the capitulation of the citadel of Tournay, the Prince of Hessen-Cassel started at four o'clock in the afternoon in the same direction; at nine o'clock Cadogan followed him with forty squadrons more, and at midnight the whole army broke up its camp and marched after them. Twenty-six battalions alone were left before Tournay to superintend the evacuation and to level the siege-works, with orders to watch Villars carefully and not to move until he did.
The Prince of Hessen-Cassel soon overtook Orkney, from whom he learned that St. Ghislain was too strongly held to be carried by his small force. The
- [Footnote: on while in the trenches. Our miners and the enemy very often
meet each other, when they have sharp combats till one side gives way. We have got into three or four of the enemy's great galleries, which are thirty or forty feet underground and lead to several of their chambers; and in these we fight in armour by lanthorn and candle, they disputing every inch of the gallery with us to hinder our finding out their great mines. Yesternight we found one which was placed just under our bomb batteries, in which were eighteen hundredweight of powder besides many bombs: and if we had not been so lucky as to find it, in a very few hours our batteries and some hundreds of men had taken a flight into the air."—Daily Courant, 20th August.]
- ↑ 8th, 10th, 15th, 16th.
